enlightened horsemanship through touch

Yes. This post, along with several others, mysteriously vanished from the blog today. This is a repost.

Monkey in a Tree by Igor Kagan

Once upon a time, a long time from now, there was a very old gray monkey who lived in a tree in the middle of his village. This monkey was the keeper of a beautiful box, polished wood encrusted with inlaid diamonds and images of the sun and the ocean. Only this old monkey knew what was in the box, and that was okay because it was a time of peace in the monkey villages.

Each day, this old monkey would teach to any of the monkey’s who wanted to learn. Little jumpy young monkeys, older monkeys, and even monkeys from neighboring villages would come and munch on berries and bananas in the shade of the old monkey’s tree. They would listen to the old monkey tell his stories, as he cradled the box in his lap.

“Once upon a time, a long time from now, there was a great monkey revolution,” the old monkey would tell them. “A time when there was no longer this monkey or that monkey, no me,” and he would point to himself, “no you” and he would point and tickle a young monkey, “no nothing! Just everything!” And the tickled little monkey would giggle, and the other monkey’s would shake their heads yes – even the ones who didn’t yet understand – because the old monkey had the secret box. And one would always say “What’s in the box, old monkey?”

And the old monkey would laugh and show them that the box could not be opened, so how he could know? He would look at them very seriously and say “This box was given to me by my teacher, and he got it from an old monkey who was his teacher, who received it from his teacher. No one knows how old it is or what is in it, but it bring us peace.”

Then one or another monkey would start playing the guitar and another would bang a drum and they would dance.

Except for one monkey, a young not very special monkey who would go up to the old monkey after everyone else had gone off to dance. He would sit with the older monkey sometimes for hours at a time, the old monkey with his eyes closed and the young monkey with his eyes downcast. Every so often the old monkey would gently place his hand on the young monkey’s head, and smile. Always, always one hand stayed on the beautiful wooden box.

One day a few other tiny young monkeys they hadn’t seen before came from a neighboring village to listen and sit, as was often the case. But this day, a pack of tigers came by and attacked the sitting monkeys. Sadly several of the monkeys were quickly devoured, but one young monkey was hanging by the tail out of a tigers mouth. Our young monkey ran from the old monkey’s side and jumped on the tiger and distracted it, making it open its mouth and drop the other little monkey, who ran off back to the safety of his own village.

“Why did you do that?” asked the old monkey when things had settled down. “Because if I were caught in a tigers mouth, I would expect that another monkey would do the same for me. It is just what is right,” said the young monkey. And the old monkey smiled and closed his eyes and they sat together, the old monkey’s hand on the young monkey’s head, as the sun went down and the moon came up and the night-owls and hyenas began to serenade them in harmonies that only monkeys can hear.

The young monkey grew older, and the old monkey grew ever more ancient. Soon the young monkey had a wife and child of his own, but every day he would come for the teachings, to sit with the old monkey, to be smiled upon. Each passing day the crowd grew bigger and every day someone demanded to know what was in the box. Never once did this young monkey ask what was in the box, though every other monkey had asked at least once if not many more times.

One day, the old monkey came to teach the many monkeys who had come from all around to hear what he would tell them. “My monkey friends,” he said “Today is my last day with you in this form. Tonight I will go on to another monkey place. And I must leave this box of secrets with one of you.”

A great murmur went through the crowd. Monkeys who moments ago had long since stopped really caring what was in the box suddenly felt a burning need to be chosen. The old monkey pointed to his special young monkey friend. “He is to be the one.” Many monkeys hooted and hollered with joy, because they knew this young monkey and his dedication to the teacher. But many of the others, especially ones who had only just begun to come to the teachings from neighboring villages, looked at him with envy.

The young monkey looked at the old monkey, then he looked at all the dozens of monkeys gathered for the teachings, then he looked far across the village to his wife and child who were staring down from a tree. The old monkey called the young monkey to his place at the base of the tree. “Come here, young friend, for the transmission of the box of secrets.” The young monkey looked at him and said “Teacher, I do not want the box!” The old monkey smiled and said “It is for this very reason that you must take it.”

The young monkey understood, and made his way to the tree. The old monkey held the beautiful shining diamond wooden box out in his palm, and said “Now it is yours to protect. You will know what to do with it when the time is right.”

The monkeys began hooting and drumming and singing, and a dance ensued as the young monkey and the old monkey climbed up to their place in the tree. They sat as if nothing special had happened, because they both knew that was exactly what had happened. They sat as the sun went down, eyes closed as the singing and dancing of the monkeys below them grew and grew as word spread of what had happened.

And when the young monkey opened his eyes after endless hours of contemplation, the old monkey was gone. It was just the young monkey and the box, and the heavy silence of a thousand monkeys staring up at him with happy eyes, wet eyes, jealous eyes, angry eyes.

The monkey’s wife and child swung their way through the trees to him, and he embraced them with one arm, the box clutched in the other hand. He looked at the crowd below and asked “My friends, why do you no longer rejoice?”

The leader of the striped dancing monkeys from a neighboring village stepped to the front of the crowd, a spear clutched in his hand. “Open the box! We want to know what is in the box!” Many in the crowd yelled and shouted in support of the striped monkey. “I cannot”, said the young monkey, “The box cannot be opened.”

The striped monkey and his tribe began doing their dance of tribulation to the god of their village, their spears bobbing up and down as their feet stamped out a dance of prayer. The striped monkey shouted up at the young monkey, “We WILL know what is in that box! Our god has decreed it is so!”

The elder of the white-haired laughing monkey tribe came forward, carrying a torch, as the striped monkeys angrily continued their dance. “We must also know what is in the box!” White haired monkeys made their way from all over the crowd until there was a mob of white haired monkeys who began doing their prayer, laughing up and down from earth to the heavens in worship of their village’s god. “OUR god demands that you open the box!” “But I cannot, my friends” said the young monkey, holding out the box high above their heads. “It cannot open.” The white-haired monkey’s laughter began to take on a rigid, barking tone as they continued to pay tribute to their village’s god.

A great thundering sound began approaching the village, and the young monkey clutched his family closer. He told his wife and child, “Do not be afraid. There is nothing in the box more important to me than the love I feel for you and for all my fellow monkeys.” As the thundering grew louder the young monkey could see that thousands of monkeys from neighboring villages were coming. Some carrying spears, some carrying bows and arrows, all of them looking hungry and ready to take what they had decided belonged to them.

A monkey bigger than any the young monkey had ever seen approached the tree, holding an unfamiliar object. “I do not know you, young monkey, nor do I need to,” said this huge monkey. “All I know is that the old monkey has gone away, and you have the box of secrets. This box belongs to all of us know, so hand it over!”

“No I cannot do that,” said the young monkey. “I would sooner destroy it than disobey my teacher.”

“Your teacher is gone,” said the huge monkey. “There is a new law of the land!” And ten thousand monkeys cheered, and the huge monkey pressed something on the object he was holding, and a great flash of fire and smoke shot out of it as a burst of energy from the object ripped through a nearby tree. The big monkey laughed. “Have you never seen a gun before! Because I have this weapon, I am now in charge. Now hand over that box!”

Cheers went through the crowd as the monkeys started to realize that thanks to this new way of fighting they too might soon know the secrets of the box. The white-haired laughing monkeys approached the tree and with their torches began setting fire to the wood and branches. And the striped monkeys began throwing spears at the young monkey and his family. If only they could kill the young monkey, they too could learn the secret of the peaceful old monkey! Then what power they would have!

The young monkey grabbed his child and he and his wife climbed further up the tree, beyond the reach of the spears and fire and the guns. The monkeys below were in a frenzy, each tribe praying in the way they believed that their god wanted them to, some laughing, some dancing, some singing in throaty monkey voices. All of them banded together in a burning desire to take the box of secrets.

The young monkey looked down from his perch at the top of the tree, at the violence and anger and fire boiling below. He could feel the heat of their raging desire rolling up towards him. He looked at his family, and at the box in his hand. He knew that if he did not let the box go, his family would not make it through the night. His wife looked at him with pleading eyes. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t let it go. I will die for you.” “No,” he said, “my teacher said I would know what to do when the time came.”

The young monkey sat down and put the box in his lap, one hand on the head of his child, his wife next to him. He closed his eyes and put one hand on the box, and sat. And sat. And sat.

And eventually he opened his eyes to the great silence of thousands monkeys staring up at him, even ten thousand more than before, each thinking they wanted the secret for their tribe, but each really wanting the secret for themselves. The young monkey smiled, and held out his hand, and let the box tumble to the ground below.

The monkey bigger than any he had ever seen before caught the box and held it in his hand. “I am now the keeper of the secrets!” And his tribe roared with appreciation. The other tribes shifted their feet, their eyes darting around, not sure whether to band together against this carrier of the new fighting device.

“Shall we see what this box contains?” asked the huge monkey. A huge roar went through the monkey crowd. But the young monkey merely smiled, knowing that there was nothing worth fighting for in the box.

The huge monkey tried to open the box but quickly realized there was no way to open it. “What is the secret to opening it?” he shouted up at the young monkey. The young monkey smiled down at him. “Nothing. There is no secret other than to hold the box.”

“Fine, then we will do it my way!” And as he picked up a large rock to smash the box, a cheer went up from many in the crowd. And, too late, a gasp of sadness from many who suddenly remembered the peaceful times sitting under the tree with their teacher, the old monkey.

The huge monkey hurled a rock at the box, and it shattered open revealing the contents. “What is this?” said the huge monkey. “There is nothing in here!” And he was right. The box of secrets that had been the source of teachings in the time of peace had shattered open revealing absolutely nothing. Shards of wood and glass lay glittering in the fire from the torches.

“As I said,” the young monkey smiled down at him, “there is nothing in the box worth fighting for.”

The huge monkey grunted in disgust and began making his way through the crowd. “Come, my tribe, let us go back to our village and pray to OUR god. I have always know THAT is where the truth lies.”

The white haired monkey’s stopped their laughing and their leader said “Come white haired monkeys, we must return to our village and laugh our way to the divine, for THAT is where the real truth lies.”

And the striped monkeys put their spears back in their satchels and their leader “Come striped monkeys, we must go back to our village and dance to show that we still believe in OUR god, the truth of all.”

And the young monkey watched them all walking away and smiled and held up his hand and said quietly “Stop my friends, there is something I must tell you.”

And the striped monkeys, white haired monkeys, and very large monkeys all stopped and turned back to the young monkey, who, truth be told, wasn’t so young anymore. “What each of you believe to be true, I respect. What each of you think of as god, is your business. But the secret of the box, that kept the monkey villages at peace for so many years, is that at the end of the day we are all just monkeys. There’s no big secret. I am the same as you, and we can each believe whatever we want, but we can also all believe that there’s nothing worth fighting over. But the true secret, the one that is worth time and effort, is to look deeply into yourself for the answers to ultimate power, not to seek it in some little box of wood and diamonds.”

And he climbed down from the tree, and sat at the base of the tree where the old monkey used to teach, and the sun began to rise in the sky. “Come and sit with me,” said the young monkey, “whatever you believe. Let us sit and be one community made up of people who each believe whatever they believe. Do not let belief turn us against each other, or desire for power or greed for material things, or ill-will, or rigid beliefs about how the world works or what god is. Let us grow together by looking out for each other.”

As he spoke, the young monkey’s child gathered the shards of the box and handed them to his father. The young monkey smiled, and placed the shards in one hand, and put his other hand on his child’s head as his wife stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. The young monkey held up the shards. “No matter how precious these diamonds, they are nothing but dirt next to the boundless love I have cultivated for all of you.”

And the unusually large monkey looked up at the young monkey and smiled. “Friend, you speak truth. For when I was a tiny monkey I was nearly killed by a tiger, and another monkey who I will never know saved my life. Your words are true – I have been led astray by a desire for power and material things, rather than respect and love. I will sit with you.”

The young monkey smiled, knowing it did not matter that it was he who had saved the unusually large monkey many years ago. The large monkey looked around at the other thousands of monkeys, and said, “Come, let us sit together and see what our friend can teach us.”

Many monkeys came and joined them, and sat in the dawning light of the sun to learn together. Many monkeys shrugged and headed back to their villages, not interested in joining the growing circle of monkeys contemplating their time together.

But those monkeys that sat together could feel in their midst a growing tree of connection that would bear fruit that they probably wouldn’t live to see, as their young teacher became an old monkey, who would one day hand a new box of secrets to a young monkey who would become an old monkey passing on that box to a younger monkey, and on and on through ages of peace and strife and sunrises and different trees and villages, always another monkey and the box, passing on the secret that only nothing was worth fighting for.

But for today, all they knew and all that mattered was that sitting together was right.

❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦

Please share! This article is licensed under Creative Commons attribution, which means you should feel free to share and re-distribute as long as you attribute the author and site.

Jerry Kolber meditates with and writes for The Interdependence Project and his own blog and is on Twitter.

I guess it’s worth pointing out that life and spiritual seeking is a journey. You’re not there.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

–Victor Frankl

The ability to remain mindful, to hold that space Frankl speaks of is a great gift. To greet it without compulsion, habit or knee-jerk reactions is to face what comes as honestly as possible.

As Rosemary McGinn says in her article, Addiction, Meditation and Space,

Without some degree of mindfulness, it can seem impossible to distinguish between stimulus and response, between experience and association.

Life happens fast. So fast our minds have a hard time keeping up with it. Even our judgements lag behind. So our minds form little habits in order to keep up, to deal with all that happens. They do it by forming associations.

But, like experiences, our

associations tumble along so quickly that they seem indistinguishable from the experience that launched them.

The human mind, not always a model of efficiency, makes a valiant effort in these cases. According to Sharon Salzberg, we

tend to compound our experience, jumbling together stimulus and response,

and our minds can drag us, unawares, from experience to judgement to anger or doubt to self-hatred in a trice.

As clicker trainers and those who practice mindfulness meditation know, there is a space in there.

Remember the old adage about counting to ten when angered before acting? That’s a means of creating awareness of the space. There are all sorts of ways of remembering that space, of recognizing it in the fleeting infinitesimal instant of its existence, and using it to its best advantage: kindness. Kindness to ourselves and our horses.

How to spot the space?

Some people do it by stilling their minds on a regular basis. This is not easy, but bears fruit over time. A few seconds at a time to start. Counting your breath without falling into the habit of discursive thought, daydreaming, etc. Returning to the simple awareness of the breath when you find yourself thinking. That breath is the space.

McGinn says,

It seemed impossible that I would ever build the muscle enough to be of much use: when I tried to count breaths up to 4, I often found myself at 37 before noticing I’d wandered.

It’s a conscious choice to seize the chance to slow things down once you spot the space, to deliberately choose your judgement and reaction based on where you’ve gone off the track, and returning to the basics. To have compassion for ourselves and others. When you’ve figured out what you want to do with the space, it works.

What do I want to do with the space?

I know what I don’t want to do with it. I don’t want to fall into aggression, anger or fear. They are the usual responses, especially when the stimulus is new or particularly challenging.

Last week I had a chance to work with a horse who showed me some particularly challenging behaviors. My task was simply to assess his body for signs of physical distress that might cause behavioral issues. But I could not get him to stand still long enough to complete the assessment. While he was dancing around, my feet were in constant danger, as were various parts of my body that he threatened to nip. Clearly, there was something going on with this guy.

Initial reaction, without respecting the space: irritation with the horse: “don’t you know I”m trying to help you?” It happens in a flash. So fast I’m not even aware of it.
Secondary reaction: “I can’t even handle him for the 90 seconds it takes to complete the assessment.”
Tertiary reaction: “I’m not very good at this.”

Had I been more mindful, acknowledging the space would have allowed me to think,”Yes, there is something going on here. I can’t handle him myself and assess him at the same time.” I needed to ask for a second person. Focusing in on a spiral of thoughts on myself, my own little ego, obliterated the space between the stimulus (the dancing, nipping horse), and the response (self-doubt and recrimination). The efficiency and habit-following tendency of my mind did me no favors here. But I’m really in charge of that, aren’t I?

Now I know what I want to do with the space: Practice practice practice and awareness. Respect it.

Next time: see the space.
Choose the response (don’t let it choose me): it’s not all about me.
Ask for help if you need it.
Help the horse.

I miss a few of my longtime readers and commenters. I suspect I know the reason for your recent absence, and I do not blame you one little bit. EHTT is NOT a “cause” blog. EHTT is an exploration blog. A thinking blog. A wondering blog.

One of the best things about blogging is the community of friends and mutual commenters we have going. It’s the only way to see what’s going on out there other than random clicking, and who has time for that? If you went away because you were tired of being clobbered over the head with a recent cause, It’s OVER. Come back. I’ve missed you. That’s not to say that I don’t already adore my new readers. I do. Adore you. Welcome. Speak out when it moves you.

This has been a busy month at Tellington TTouch, and so there has been little time to write and learn on my own. In March, look for more on oxytocin, the horsmone that governs touch and social bonding between horses and humans, and at also, the debut of Tuesday’s Touch.

A recap of thoughts this month.

The Hormone Oxytocin and Touch published on February 7 in Horses, Touch, and Science.

Affirmations For Horsepeople: Live in the Present Moment published on February 9 in Affirmations of Awareness, Mindfulness, Horses, and Horsemanship.

Multitasking Is Not Your Friend published on February 18 in Buddhism, Equine Intellect & Behavior, Mindfulness and Science.

If you were reading last month and had a favorite I didn’t list here, please let me know. For that matter, if you think these posts were no good at all and you’d rather see others (or none at all) in a month-end summary, say that, too!

If it pleases you, I’d like to see a link to your favorite posts from your own blogs, if you write them. Spread the love!

I got the idea for this post from the blog at Beliefnet and from falling while walking Rubydog. How did this happen? Simply put, I wasn’t paying attention. In comments on Live In the Present Moment we’ve been discussing quality of attention and how it affects riding and our lives, and I failed to practice what I preach.

As Rubydog and I rounded a corner on our way home from our morning walk/jog, I waved to the construction workers who are adding the new lanais on our complex, and put a foot wrong. I fell with a comically spectacular splat, removing skin and flesh from a large portion of my elderly knee. Ouch. Hilarity and gushing of blood ensued. Road rash in Hawaii has a particularly jagged quality because of the lava.

In truth, I was not paying attention. I was multi-tasking. I was thinking of my daughter, watching the rare two cars that were passing, and anticipating the greetings of the workers. Most folks would say this isn’t too much. That’s not multitasking! But it was. Look what happened.

Have you ever found yourself talking on the phone while walking down the street, while drinking a cup of coffee, making a mental shopping list, and getting your keys ready to open your front door?
What about talking on the phone while looking at your email, admiring a new car in a tv commercial?
Wouldn’t want to miss anything!
How about when we’re talking to a good friend and furtively glance at our Blackberry? Media guru Renny Gleeson says that what we’re really saying is, “you are not as important as literally almost anything that could come to me through this device.”
Ram Dass said it well, forty years ago: Be Here Now.
But we all try and multitask to some degree. Well, most of us. Here’s Thich Nhat Hanh on the topic:
“When I drink a glass of water, I invest one hundred percent of myself in drinking it. You should train yourself to live every moment of your daily life like that.”
I’m guessing Thay doesn’t have a Blackberry.
We often act as though multitasking is necessary, that to be successful in this frenetic world requires us to juggle hyperkinetically, never letting our attention rest on one thing for more than a fraction of a second. We’re given tips on how to do it better, and gadgets that make it easier. One of the biggest complaints people seem to have about the new iPad is its inability to multitask.

Driving, for sure, takes a lot of concentration. We all wish we could shout, “Get off the phone and drive!” now and again. In Hawaii, it’s illegal to use a cellphone in the driver’s seat. But the rest of the time, wouldn’t you think multitasking was OK?

Neuroscientist Gary Aston-Jones, Ph.D said in a recent CNN.com article, says there may be a cost associated with becoming an expert multitasker, saying it “may ‘lower the threshold of distractibility,’ possibly harming the ability to do tasks that require intense sustained focus, such as art, science, and writing.”

What humans can do, Millier said, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with lightning speed. This is very different from the way the mind and perceptual system of horses work. As we switch from attentive task to task, we fool ourselves into thinking we are paying attention to everything around us at the same time. But it is really sequential. Horses, unlike humans, perceive the reality around them in a diffuse way, for which they are sometimes punished. I wrote about this in Do You Demand Your Horse’s Complete Attention? and then it was discussed with great alacrity at Glenshee Equestrian Center.

The problem with multitasking is so very simple. Changing our minds is not. If we choose too many objects to give our attention to, we cannot deepen our familiarity, our friendliness, with any of them. Our minds cannot immerse themselves in each object’s arena beyond superficiality. It’s like glancing instead of examining.

Here’s where mindfulness practice can come in handy. Rather than acting as mental dilettantes and leaping from one task to another, if we allow our minds to fully occupy one object at a time, we can assemble a coherent theme. There is great comfort in this, and for those who practice it, greater productivity, connection to their inner worlds as well as to those in the outside world.

Resting with open attention on any object (by object I mean thought, thing, process, etc.) activates the innate human intelligence that is bypassed in multitasking. Deeper comprehension and familiarity allow greater effectiveness and insight. I suspect I don’t have to tell you this after you have tried thirty times to jump the same combination successfully. If you tried it the first ten times while mentally complaining your grocery list and the next two times while predcting that your horse was going to veer to the left after the second jump, your failure was practically guaranteed. Once your focus was fully on the process, however, and you held in your mind the picture of success (much like the visualization process of sports psychology), banishing all ideas of what might go wrong, you did it! Success!

Some of us, while looking at a piece of carrot, can see the whole cosmos in it, can see the sunshine in it, can see the earth in it. It has come from the whole cosmos for our nourishment. You may like to smile to it before you put it in your mouth. When you chew it, you are aware that you are chewing a piece of carrot. Don’t put anything else into your mouth, like your projects, your worries, your fear, just put the carrot in. And when you chew, chew only the carrot, not your projects or your ideas. You are capable of living in the present moment, in the here and the now. It is simple, but you need some training to just enjoy the piece of carrot. This is a miracle.

–Thich Nhat Hanh

Chögyam Trungpa way back in 1976, reminded me that I should not walk and think at the same time:

Meditation is working with our speed, our restlessness, our constant busyness. Meditation provides space or ground in which restlessness might function, might have room to be restless, might relax by being restless. If we do not interfere with restlessness, then restlessness becomes part of the space. We do not control or attack the desire to catch our next tail.

I come back to it again and again, much as Bonnitta does when exploring the left, the right, in order to find the middle: “Oops, Thinking! Let go of that thought. Focus on now.”

As Buddhists say so often:

When walking, just walk.

When riding, just ride.

Whenever disaster strikes, there is the rush to aid. Someone dies, and remaining loved ones are showered with attention from friends and family. An auto accident produces offers of assistance in the form of casseroles, rides to the doctor’s office, errands run. Natural disasters like the recent earthquake in Haiti create a huge flurry of activity in the form on international aid and reconstruction.

Until, that is, people reach a kind of empathy overload. It’s a natural part of the human psychology to harden a little bit, to have their empathy less and less stimulated by the triggering event. This is the same mechanism that makes pornography so dangerous and even, some would say, our ability to turn away from cruel horsemanship practices like LDR and soring. In these cases, it’s obviously not empathy that gets overloaded, but the appetite for stimulus that gets satisfied in the same way. There is the mental need to move on to increasing foci.

I have experienced this phenomenon so many times I can’t count. I know it intimately. We as a family have had more than our share, more than the share of several families, of sudden disaster. Early on, there were a great outpouring of kindness and offers of assistance. In fact, I don’t know if I could have made it through my daughter’s first grade year without the assistance of the entire lower school of the Princeton Day School. But as the tragedies continued, I found folks to become more and more inured. Whether it was a case of “there before the grace of you go I,” or whether we as a family revealed to them the truth that you can’t really protect your child, I don’t know. All I do know is it became easier and easier for them to make an initial offer and then to turn away. To protect themselves.

This brings me (finally!) to the point of this post.

Elisha Goldstien, PhD iis offering downloads of his ebook, A Mindful Dialogue: A Path Toward Working With Stress, Pain and Difficult Emotions for $9.99, with 100% of the proceeds going to the organization Hope for Haiti Now, which donates to The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, Oxfam America, Partners in Health, Red Cross, UNICEF, United Nations World Food Programme, and Yele Haiti Foundation. Whether this will still mean hope for Haiti in ten years, time will tell, but even as you read this, empathetic minds are wandering, and pocketbooks are dwindling.

The reason I have chosen to donate through Elisha Goldstein is that learning mindful coping mechanisms can only increase and sustain my source of empathy for others (horses included). I develop myself as a being while coming to the aid of others.

Here’s a description of the ebook:

A Mindful Dialogue was written to be a companion through life when dealing with stress, pain and difficult emotions. Through 24 interviews with leaders in the field such as Jack Kornfield, Dan Siegel, Sharon Salzberg, Tara Brach, Jeff Brantley, Zindel Segal and Others and 23 short explorations of simple quotes from leaders such as Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Rumi, Hafiz, Pema Chodron and others, you’ll uncover a mindful path toward working with the stress, pain and difficult emotions in daily life.

That’s quite a list of contributors. I’ll be please to throw my little hat in with their very big ones and add to the continuing aid for Haitians, who have so little right now.

May the quest for compassion by one individual inform the greater empathy of all.

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

– Buddha

It has long been known that living in the present moment is the key to contentment. It is more than that, more than a way to live life to its fullest. It is an opportunity to participate directly in reality as it is created.

Often we bumble through it. We think we are paying attention, but really we are not.

I can’t tell you how many times I would lose focus simply trying to execute a simple 20 meter circle or serpentine. Or to get over a series of low jumps in a straight line.

“No Kim–were you paying attention? You lost it in the same spot as last time! Try it again!”
My horse was on point. No loss of attention there, because animals don’t indulge in that inner dialog that distracts us from participation in the present moment. I was intent on not making the same mistake I made last time. Like not thinking of the elephant in the room, we think of the elephant in the room. The mistake we made last time is in the consciousness if we are trying to avoid it. Better to eliminate it from the mind and focus only on current reality. Right now, it’s not there. Even better, holding the intention that things will go well increases the chances that they will.

But planning for the future, even a second or two into it, has its own disadvantages, as riders know. Your body does what your mind tells it, sometimes without your permission or knowledge. Better not to anticipate.

We hear it all the time, no matter the discipline: “Stay out of your horse’s way.” It’s hard to stay out of the horse’s way if you are a novice, and sometimes hard to do it as an advanced rider, too, if you are accustomed to over riding. For human beings, each stimulus prompts its own cascade of inner dialog or opportunity for spacing out. Like the half halt or the rein back, staying present is a skill that must be practiced. The key as both novices and advanced riders to staying out of the horse’s way and maintaining focus is living in the present moment.

As in riding, so in life. Or vice versa: stay out of life’s way. Don’t over-live and don’t go through blindly. Most folks move back and forth between these two modes automatically, moment by moment, without awareness of it. Can we take hold of the reins and greet each new stimulus as it comes? Not as easy as it sounds.

I’d love to hear your tips and tricks for mental presence and focus as you ride.

Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.

–Thich Nhat Hanh

Many thanks to Beliefnet for the idea for this series of posts and for the quotes used in it. Interpretations are mine.

I read a review at blogcritics.org of The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz* that made me laugh out loud. Only problem was, I was on my lanai and it was 11:30 at night. I’m sure I awoke my neighbors who had an early plane to Minnesota this morning. Sorry!

Here’s what the reviewer said to evoke my mirthful response:

Before I get started with this review, I feel the need to get one important caveat out of the way: I am not one of those navel-gazing, crystal-wearing, pipe-smoking, new-age freaks. There, I feel much better.

Funny: a year ago, I might have written that. Elements of the statement still apply. But if the desire to get to the elemental truth of man’s relationship to horses qualifies me as a freak, so be it. Few changes in the world have been wrought by folks who walk the middle of the road. The reviewer’s statement did give me an idea for a good Halloween costume, though.

In my post asking for input on a equine bill of rights, I said,

If we love our animals, why not ensure that they enjoy the same benefits of living in the modern that we hope to provide for our loved ones? After all, when we assume the stewardship of an animal, we also take on the responsibility of treating it humanely.

From that statement, I’ve been steadily work backward to the foundation of humane and compassionate treatment of horses in the area of riding, training and basic care. Working deductively toward a kind of mission statement as to the essentials has not proven easy. The constituent articles of such a foundation will always be hotly debated unless we arrive at the most fundamental of conclusions. That’s why I was thrilled to learn of,

The Four Agreements
by don Miguel Ruiz

Be impeccable with your word.
Don’t take anything personally.
Don’t make assumptions.
Always do your best.

In The Four Agreements, a book written with the self-actualization of people in mind, don Miguel Ruiz writes from the ancient Toltec perspective, revisiting the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. The Four Agreements offers a code of conduct for the transformation from old patterns of reactiveness to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. According to Ruiz, we have domesticated ourselves from birth to accept confining cultural and spiritual constructs. He labels the beliefs borne of this process of domestication agreements. Everything people do is based on agreements we have made – with ourselves, with other people, with life. He goes on to explain that the majority of these agreements are detrimental to us in that they derive from fear, which saps our energy and diminishes our self worth. They limit our ability to live in the moment with joy and clarity of vision. Ruiz emphasizes the fact that the most important agreements are those we make with ourselves. Here we tell ourselves who we are, how we should behave, what is possible, what is impossible. These agreements can be changed with determination and awareness.

Like tiny seeds planted in cold, dark soil, I suddenly felt the faint stirrings of promise sprouting in some of the darkest places of my mind. While these simple concepts might be rather obvious to some, for me they were wonderful reminders of the importance of stopping, taking a step back, and reevaluating habits and priorities.

The current, longstanding welfare problems for horses can be said to arise from our dysfunctional agreements with ourselves on the subject of our relationship to other beings (and, for the purposes of our discussion, to horses). I’d like to examine the agreements with respect to horses in light of the proposed equine bill of rights.

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
“Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”
Here is where your Horseman’s Manifesto will come in handy. Deliberate application of our personal manifestos on a moment-by-moment basis will take concentration at first, but will soon become second nature if attempted with an open heart. Speaking to our horses comprises just about every possible action taken under saddle and on the ground. These are promises that must not be broken.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
“Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”
This agreement is less easy to interpret. Our relationships with our horses are personal. The danger of personalizing their reactions to our requests and demands however, is that reactivity seldom produces positive results. Greeting our horses’ reactions to us with the emotional detachment that derives from unconditional acceptance and compassion eliminates the potential for harmful ego-based negative reactions. An example: When I first started riding, I thought my Quarter Horse Brego was trying to kill me. It really hurt my feelings that day after day I would go to him and try with all my might to stay on during his frenzied spins, only to get repeated mouthfuls of turf. One can see where personalizing issues like this can lead. If I were a different kind of person, I might have punished him for this kind of behavior.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions
“Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama.”
We don’t speak the same language, horses and people. Even those who claim to be horse whisperers will admit they don’t listen as well as they should all the time. In all fairness, making assumptions is a natural function of the way the human mind works. We gather evidence and theorize based on what (we think) we know. All too often, however, we are wrong. This is fine when we are doing small-time science experiments in a lab, but not fine when we are dealing with the malleable mind of another being.

The downside to incomplete listening is that in order to fill in the gaps, you have to make assumptions. Going back to my example above: based on my limited understanding of equine behavior, I assumed that Brego deliberately tried to put me on the ground time and time again. As I have learned a little bit more, I now see how he suffered terribly from a lack of confidence and was reduced to near panic attacks in certain situations. Repeated exposure to them in the form of “desensitization” did not help. It just exposed him more and more to what scared him. I didn’t have the tools to listen and not make incorrect assumptions. If you have ‘em, use ‘em. If you don’t, stay open. You soon will.

4. Always Do Your Best
“Your best is going to change from moment to moment. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.”

Acknowledgment and acceptance of the fluidity of the process while making a commitment to such agreements might allow our horsemanship to undergo a pretty profound transformation. Exchanging those old, worn-out deleterious agreements for Ruiz’ deceptively simple and powerful guiding principles could have an effect on our entire lives.

Like all great wisdom derived from the ancients, the good stuff is often hidden in plain sight. Mindfulness and concentration are required to detect, examine and implement the most elegant solutions to any problem, and the “problem” of ensuring the continued welfare of our horses and guaranteeing that of others needs a solution. If you have thoughts on these agreements or how they might be used to further the idea of an equine bill of rights, please let me know.

*Bio at audible.com and wikipedia.

For many reading today, it’s the depth of winter. Getting out and riding can be difficult, unless you are blessed with a heated indoor arena. I always had a really hard time making myself do more than visiting my horses on the short dark days of winter, particularly when it was raining or snowing. You may even feel guilty that it’s hard, and that the weather and the shortness of days has sometimes prevented you from spending adequate time with your horses. I say, don’t.

Solomon’s message, ❝this too shall pass,❞ or the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence (Pāli: अनिच्चा anicca; Sanskrit: अनित्य anitya), reminds us that all of conditioned existence, without exception, is in a constant state of flux. Nothing, absolutely nothing has a permanent state. I find this a comfort when enduring painful times or even when I’m just plain uncomfortable.

Someday soon, it will be spring. Not only will it be physically easier to get out there and play with horses, but it will also become a kind of instinctive call. Nature will summon us to enjoy the warmth of the sun and share the company of our warm-blooded outdoor friends. It’s a biological, evolutionary imperative for humans. For the time being, for those of us who are daunted by the prospect of entering the dark frozen landscape, no matter the reward outside, it will be a kindness to ourselves to hold in awareness the knowledge that this too shall pass. Instead of feeling guilty or forcing yourself to do something that makes you dreadfully unhappy, consider the following:

• If you hold in your awareness the fact that this time is impermanent, it may be easier for you to get out there in the cold and visit or ride.
• If it is essential that you feed, clean stalls, maintain the facility, then you have no choice. Having no choice is an excellent opportunity for practicing radical acceptance. Reminding yourself that “this too shall pass,” even while fully experiencing each moment, the coldness of your fingers, the dry icy intake of your breath, the damp footing in the aisles, places you in greater contact with the flux of reality.
• If you cannot force yourself to get out there, it is no great disaster. Do not feel guilty. If your horses are lucky enough to be in the company of others and to have the care of hired professionals at a boarding stable, then know that they are receiving the care you have generously arranged for them. They are in their natural company. They are taking care of themselves, and probably welcome the break. You need add nothing more. Take care of yourself.

While you’re waiting for the thaw, here are a few things you can do with your horses if you can’t ride.

1. Groom, groom, groom. I have a friend, Debbie, who has used the bad weather to elevate the grooming her horse Laddie to an art. Not only is Laddie the most beautiful Belgian cross around, but he also gleams with the joy of Debbie’s close contact and touch.

2. Massage. Do bodywork. Find the elusive magic scratching spot. There’s no time like the present to practice what you have been learning in those videos you rented. If you haven’t, get some! Your horse will thank you. He gets plenty of exercise outdoors. Maybe he doesn’t get enough muscle love from you.

3. Perfect that special braid you’ve always wanted your horse to sport. Equine Ink has two excellent posts on braids. Check them out. Do yourself a favor, though: wear some fingerless gloves.

4. Learn to trim your horses’ hooves yourself. This is a long term project requiring lots of education. It’s worth it.

5. Try something totally new. Something you would NEVER try when you are in work. Maybe something you can do right there in the stall. Clicker Train your horse to do a useful trick like lowering his head for the halter or even kneeling for mounting.

Maintaining an awareness of each of those moments, celebrating them even as we are mindful of their impermanence honors our lives and those of our horses. Got any more ideas to help take advantage of the moments we will never experience again this winter?